Drought isn’t California’s only water problem

While drought is the number one water issue on Californian’s minds, there is another water problem in the state. ABC Action News Tampa Bay discovered a survey that began in the early 2000s conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey that nearly a fifth of the state’s public groundwater could be considered toxic.

The water in the wells tested does not look contaminated to the naked eye, due to the ground naturally filtering it, however arsenic, uranium and manganese were found in almost all of the 11,000 wells that were tested. Public wells only make up a fraction of the quarter-million private wells that were not studied. Researchers believe if private wells were tested they would find contaminates there as well.

The study does not say what kind of effects the contaminates would have based off of human consumption.